Hey all,

Some time ago I bought a pair electric blues. At first they were getting harassed constantly by my orange algae eater (chinese algae eater I think is the common name), so I quite promptly removed him from the tank.

Things were fine for a bit and the blue rams were peaceful until a couple of days ago they started getting really territorial near my cave-area on the bottom. At first the female would camp outside of the cave and the male would chase down anything that would get close. This took a few days until I noticed the male wasn't aggressive anymore. Since yesterday, however, I found out that now the female is super aggressive. She's still camping around the same area and any fish that swims nearby gets chased/bitten. In fact they were so aggressive when I put my hand in the water they'd attack me.

Only reason I could think of this sudden burst of aggression (it's been going on a few days now) is that the female would have laid eggs somewhere, however I can't see any. That said I do use pool filter sand so it'd probably be hard to see but I did a rather thorough search through the 'red zone', even removed the cave and some plants...and I'm pretty sure there aren't any eggs.

Out of desperation I did try to seperate the female ram from the other fish by placing her in a fish net and later on a plastic container near the water surface...kind of like a quarantaine zone. Once I released her she went back to her turf again so nothing's changed.

As of now the female ram is still camping in the left corner of my tank, scaring off & biting any fish that come nearby...which I feel is especially harmful for my eel since he likes swimming there and he's kinda slow, so I really want to solve this problem. Any tips? I'd appreciate it.

Totally sounds like they are mating or at least trying to. Specially since rams are generally peaceful and really only get aggressive when defending something, like eggs. And sometimes during a first go at mating the fish will eat the eggs and still defend the site as if the eggs are still there. That's fairly typical unfortunately. The second go usually has better results.

The best thing to do in my opinion is just set up a blockade or tank divider for your rams if you are unable to relocate them into a special breeding tank. Or you can always rearrange your tank - that forces the cichlids to define their breeding territory all over again and this time you can force their hand a little by making only a certain area have any caves or what not.

Good luck! Just my two cents but it sounds like some breeding is going on.

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I like big fish tanks and I can not lie. You other brothers can't deny.

So funny you said I could rearrange the tank, because that's what I did a couple of hours ago. I first removed the cave and some plants, which wasn't enough because the female would head back immediately and repeat previous aggressive behaviour. Then I was running out of options and I decided to just replace a large piece of wood on top of the spot she was guarding. Saw some aggression afterwards still, but it quickly ceased...and now they're both swimming around again.

That seems to have solved it for now, I do hope this type of aggression doesn't happen too often cause I can't see it helping any of my other fish. It's also kind of a vicious cycle if they did actually spawn eggs...their territorial behaviour means they constantly chase my peacock eel (who doesn't actually care about any of the other fish and just wants to poke his nose into as many things as he can...) and he just returns after 10 sec to be chased off again, causing a lot of stress. If there were any actual eggs I'm pretty confident the eel would eat them as well, so I'm not expecting any laid eggs to actually survive either. Loss/loss situation ;)

Anyways I'll see how this continues. Thanks More info on this behaviour is ofcourse still appreciated.

Hmm well its been a few days and today I decided to feed some live food (bloodworms) and it quite clearly shows that, as soon as the food drops to the bottom, the small blue ram will claim it as its own territory and nothing is allowed to even come close, except the other blue. It will literally camp on the spot the food drops. I've tried spreading it out a bit but it isn't very effective.

Without food they seemed to be peaceful, but this behaviour is starting to frustrate me.
It didn't happen when I fed frozen food, only live. It's causing a lot of stress I feel.

Is this normal and is there anything I could do about it? I could consider swapping this fish for a different blue ram at the pet store, but I don't know that will solve it. I read these fish are supposed to be very peaceful. Help appreciated

The Rams will try to breed if they feel that they're home is sufficient enough... Your tank is in good condition and live food only stimulates them more. They are peaceful, but will get VERY aggressive when breeding. ALL rams do that. Whoever sold you the fish should have explained that to you. Getting different Rams won't do anything. Only other thing you can do, is find a separate tank for the rams, or give back either the female or the male back, and just leave your tank with one single ram.

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I see. Well I just went to the aquarium store and the guy told me it's either because they want to breed or because the female ram thinks the bloodworms lying on the bottom are her eggs.

Apart from creating stress they apparently shouldn't be able to harm my other fish too much, I guess I'll try less live food...because it didn't happen with frozen food for some reason.

Only problem would be getting my peacock eel to feed, since he just spits out any frozen food but goes nuts on live food...oh well.